Port Authority issued ‘tough guy threats’ against developer in ‘mob movie’ fight over World Trade: Book

In the spring of 2012, more than a decade after the tragedy of 9/11, developer and leaseholder Larry Silverstein was in the home stretch for the completion of Four World Trade Center — after facing safety criticism from the NYPD over its all-glass facade and initial doubts from the Bloomberg administration over being able to fill the building with tenants. But he had one more old, familiar for to face down: The Port Authority, which had been a thorn in his side for much of the construction. In an adapted excerpt from his new book, “The Rising: The Twenty-Year Battle to Rebuild the World Trade Center” (Penguin Random House), out now, Silverstein recounts how what seemed like a conciliatory phone call from the PA turned into something like “a scene in a mob movie.”

“How would you feel about a joint topping-off ceremony?” Pat Foye, the newly appointed Port Authority chairman, asked in a call one morning in April. “Would you want to talk about it?”

I was puzzled. It was clear that my Tower Four would be completed before Tower One, so at first I didn’t understand what he was suggesting.

“The thing is,” he went on sheepishly, “it’d be embarrassing to the Port if your building topped out first.”

I could see his point. We had started construction two years after the agency. Now we would be raising the final steel beam to the roof of Tower Four before the steel would be put into place on the top of their tower. Plus we had brought our building in on budget, $1.67 billion as promised. It was a seventy-two-story environmentally sophisticated LEED-Gold-rated building designed by Pritzker Prize–winning architect Fumihiko Maki. A refined, carefully detailed sky-scraper that rose with a somber, dignified grace above the two dark pools of the 9/11 Memorial.

And now we would be beating them to the headlines. It would be the first building to top out on the new World Trade Center site. This wouldn’t help the agency’s already dubious reputation.

One part of me wanted to say, “Serves you right. After all the pain the Port has caused me, after all the millions I had to spend on litigation just to get a fair shake from the agency, it would be good to have a long last laugh.”

But … our futures at this site were intertwined; any success they had would translate into good news for Silverstein Properties and our towers, too.

“My god,” I told Foye, “if you want to do a joint topping-out, let’s do a joint.”

When I got off the phone, I sent word to my team supervising the construction at Tower Four. “We need to delay putting down the final rooftop beam,” I ordered. “Everything else—full speed ahead.”

Two months later, Foye called again. “There’s been a change of plans,” he began …“There’s no longer going to be a joint topping-out. We’re going to go first.”

I was blindsided, and stunned. “Pat, we had a deal.”

“Yes,” he agreed. “But a new decision has been made upstairs. By people with a higher pay grade than mine.”

He explained that the Port would be ready to top out Tower One in about two weeks. After they got that done, then I could have my ceremony for Tower Four a few weeks later.

“Pat,” I began evenly, determined not to lose my temper. “We’re not going to do that … As far as I’m concerned, you want to go together, we’ll go together. But if not, we’re not going to wait. We’re ready to go. We can go tomorrow, or, worst case, two days from now. But if we’re not doing this together, there’s no need for us to wait weeks. We’ll go soon.”

“You can’t.”

“What do you mean, I can’t?” So much for my decision to keep calm.

His response was both cryptic and ominous at the same time.

“There are people who don’t want you to go ahead of us.”

By now I had heard enough. “Pat, that’s not going to happen,” I said with a bristling resolve. “… We’re prepared to honor the deal we’d made with you.If you don’t want to go ahead with that arrangement, then we’ll proceed on our own. And you should know—we can have the topping-out tomorrow.”

“You can’t,” he repeated once more, and this time with even more desperation. “The Port will stop you. They’ll find a reason to stop you.”

I felt like I was in a scene in a mob movie. I was being presented with an offer I couldn’t refuse. Would I find a severed horse’s head in my bed one morning?

“Larry,” he warned once more, “they will stop you. The Port will find a reason to stop you.”

The Port, he added, would look foolish.

By this point, I had come to think the entire conversation was foolish. I had had enough. “You do what you want, Pat,” I said. “But you’re on notice. We’re going to top out very soon.”

Our topping-out was set for June 25, and all the invitations had been sent … just a few days before the ceremony, I got a call from Foye.

“Okay,” he began, “we’re not going to stand in your way.”

Stand in my way? I thought. What could they do? Dispatch a bunch of thugs to block the entrance to my building?

However, I kept my snide thoughts to myself and, instead, tried to be gracious. “Pat,” I said, “you and your colleagues are invited. In fact, we’d like you to speak. You’d be an honored guest. The Port is our partner.”

“Okay, we’ll come,” he finally said.

But he never did. Nor did anyone from the Port.

Nevertheless, the ceremony on June 25, 2012, was a big success.

Yet even in the aftermath of the ceremony at Tower Four, I continued to be perplexed by what had occurred with the Port. Who specifically had wanted the joint topping-out? And on whose author-
ity had that plan been jettisoned, only to be replaced by a new edict insisting that their building needed to go first, on its own? Even more mystifying, who had authorized the tough-guy threats, trying to tell me what I could or couldn’t do at my own building?

A couple of weeks after the ceremony I had a chance to talk to David Samson, who had been appointed chairman of the Port’s board by New Jersey’s Governor Christie.

“Listen,” I said, “can you tell me what all that was about? The Port and my topping-out ceremony?”

It was clear he had no idea, and so I went through everything. The broken agreements. The bizarre threats. The refusal to come to the event.

“Larry,” he said, “I never heard any of this before. I never had a clue. And I can tell you, it didn’t come from anyone in New Jersey. If it came from the governor or any of his appointees, I would’ve heard about it … you have no idea how strange things are at the Port … The level of dysfunction. The arrogance … “

As for who had issued the order that Tower One needed to top out first on its own, and as for who had thought it would be a good idea to try to intimidate me, well, that still remains a mystery.

From THE RISING: The Twenty-Year Battle to Rebuild the World Trade Center by Larry Silverstein. Reprinted by permission of Alfred A. Knopf, an imprint of the Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Random House LLC. Copyright © 2024 by Larry A. Silverstein.